[Ansteorra] Event Websites

[William Meriic]

Making a website graphically pleasing and capable of catering to people
disabilities is an extraordinarily difficult task.  Web-based technologies
have grown in an ad hoc fashion over the decades and are currently an
absolute disaster.  While work is being done to improve this situation one
can no longer "quickly throw together" a website and expect it to meet our
ever growing expectations.  And by no means can anyone expect anyone less
than a professional in web development to be an expert in the various
technologies that must be delicately balanced to make a website meet the
needs of a large community.

If the kingdom were to come to me as a client with this problem my
recommendation would be to set up a kingdom wide content management system
specifically configured to collect and display information about events.
All events would be required to supply a fundamental/comprehensive set of
information about their event.  Here are the benefits:

- A standardized structure would guarantee that all pertinent information
about an event would be made available; nothing would be forgotten.

- Instead of having to worry about developing an entire website, the steward
would simply fill in a few forms.  Features such as directions and maps, the
formatting of complex schedules, anti-spam protection for e-mail addresses,
embedding of multimedia, etc. would all be taking care of automatically by
the software.

- By using a quality off-the-shelf content management system the information
will be displayed in a reasonably attractive fashion, and would support
printing, disability technologies, and the quirks between different web
browsers.

- Users of the system would not need to know anything about web development.

- Information about all events could be found in one place.

- The structure and layout of the information would be consistent from one
event the next.

- Event information can easily be exported into a variety of formats (e.g.
PDF) for use in other materials such as event handouts and newsletters.

- Over time an archive of historical event information would be created.

By using a standardized system, event sites would all look the same.  While
I suggest that this is a benefit some might want to be more creative.  They
can create their own additional event site if they so desire and include a
link to it from the kingdom wide event database.

There are a number of freely available open source content management
systems that would be a perfect match for this effort.  Really, if there is
an interest in this it would require coordination with our kingdom web host
and support from the kingdom itself.  If anyone is interested in taking up
this task I be perfectly happy to offer my assistance.

Will Meriic

MKA Ted Young
CTO BNet, Inc.
CTD Digital Towpath
IT Consultant and Software Developer